[MD] Dreaming and death

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

Hi Gav,

Dreams. A splendid subject.

Somewhere long ago I recall reading that (1) during normal waking hours the left hemisphere of our brains is primarily dominant (to various degrees). The left hemisphere provides the dominant function of analytic thought and language, while the right hemisphere is primarily emotion and abstract perception. (This is very rudimentary, we can delve further into neuroscience to be more precise). (2) At the onset of sleep, the left hemisphere more or less shuts off, leaving the right hemisphere pretty much dominant. During the subsequent REM cycles, the left hemisphere is slowly boosted until around the 3rd-4th cycle it regains its dominant function over the right. This is why, speculation goes, that interruption of sleep in the early REM cycles leaves one grossly disoriented upon waking- one wakes suddenly right hemisphere dominant and it takes a few seconds for the left to regain dominance. Dream sequences during these early REM cycles (again, speculation goes) is primarly unor!
 dered, abstract colors, sounds, and other unpatterned sensory echoes. Sleep sequences during the last one or two REM cycles tends to be highly ordered (culturally) and follows fairly "logical" or coherent structures (as the left hemisphere is in control again). It is in the middle area, where there is some (left hemisphere influenced) patterning, but also unpatterned influence of the right hemisphere that interesting, "weird" dreams occur.

Joseph Campbell believed our dreams are "personal metaphorical narratives" where our experiences (absorbed either consciously or subconsciously) are recast against the collective mythos (or collective consciousness, or archetypal narratives) of one's culture.  Here, something that may not have been salient during our waking moments may indeed suddenly appear invested with a Quality our normal static filters may have filtered out. (This also occurs, relatedly if only, in "near sleep" (or daydreams) as the mind wanders and finds itself disinhibited (by static filters we are blind to). I think in many ways this is related also to the "A Ha!" moment Case (or was it Platt?) mentioned. But dreams, although similar in many ways to "A Ha!" abduction or hypothetical inference or the "art moment" are unique in that they are generally narrative (and so maintain some structure) while at the same time revealing a "Quality" that !
 our waking experience may have overlooked. (Consider Pirsig's self-reporting, ongoing "dream" of Phaedrus' return, an inevitability his waking mind refused to acknowledge. And while Pirsig's self-reporting dream may be mostly a literary device, it works because of its consistency with our own experiences of dreams... and is very Campbellian, I might add.)

Of course, Pirsig says exactly this in Lila. "He had come to think of dreams as Dynamic perceptions of reality, They were suppressed and filtered out of consciousness by conventional patterns of static social and intellectual order but they revealed a primary truth: a value truth. The static patterns of the dreams were false but the underlying values that produced the patterns were true. In static reality there is no octopus coming to squeeze us to death, no giant that is going to devour us and digest us and turn us into a part of its own body so that it can grow stronger and stronger while we are dissolved and lost into nothingness."

As for "what happens when we die", I think Pirsig's own words on it (relating to Chris) in ZMM are among the best I've read.